DeepSec 2019 Talk: Chinese Police and CloudPets — Abraham Aranguren *

[In our Call for Papers we mentioned that DeepSec and specifically DeepINTEL will have a connection to geopolitics. Well, the following description of a presentation at DeepSec gives you an idea of what we meant.]

This talk is a summary of three different security audits with an interesting background:

First, CloudPets, their epic track record, what we found and what happened afterwards.
Next, two mobile apps by Chinese Police: “BXAQ” and “IJOP”, both related to surveillance of ethnic minorities, but in different ways. Stay tuned.

Part 1: CloudPets

Wouldn’t it be cool, for a parent far from home, to be able to record a voice message with their phone and make the sound come out of a soft toy that children can hug? That’s the idea of CloudPets. Children can even respond directly from the soft toy and communicate with their parents. What could possibly go wrong? Let your imagination go wild and you will still fall short 🙂

Database dumps, blackmailing, ransoms, millions of people affected, our findings and other intrigues, not to be missed!

Part 2: Chinese Police

This part talks about two mobile surveillance apps that Chinese authorities employ to spy on the Muslim minorities of China’s Xinjiang region, the applications: “IJOP” and “BXAQ”. These audits were sponsored by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Open Technology…